Article that had is origin here on Professional Soldier
 

A thread I read here "People arent smart enough for democracy to flourish" inspired this article I wrote on my countries foremost financial website.
Thank you PS.
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/content...ail&pid=287226

Great article. Maybe we can send it to the morons in Washington DC.

My morons are more moronic than your morons but yours are more telegenic.

We could debate that all day. We've not seen this level of incompetence since jimmy carter was in office.

...and he for sure wasn't telegenic. :D

Outstanding article, Guy.

Very well written.

I have been getting requests through the original publisher from newspapers to re-print the article. It seems to have hit a nerve here.

That's what they told me when I was conned into the SME advisor gig for The Mentalistand XIII series and the World's Most Interesting Man commercials.

(This was after I left Treadstone.) :D

Might want to be prepared for someone asking this question - So, can it be 'fixed'? - which someone reading your article's thesis might not naturally infer as being possible.

Summary. Thomas Jefferson once said, "he who knows best best knows how little he knows." In Study 4, we obtained experimental support for this assertion. Participants scoring in the bottom quartile on a test of logic grossly overestimated their test performance—but became significantly more calibrated after their logical reasoning skills were improved. In contrast, those in the bottom quartile who did not receive this aid continued to hold the mistaken impression that they had performed just fine. Moreover, mediational analyses revealed that it was by means of their improved metacognitive skills that incompetent individuals arrived at their more accurate self-appraisals.

pp 1127-1130

Attchd pdf of article:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
Justin Kruger and David Dunning
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. ] 121-1134

And so it goes...

Richard :munchin

I didn't know you were TreadStone...... list updated.

Thanks for that Richard. It seems it can be fixed. A bit. By making the incompetent less incompetent. How do you make them want it though?

Our present President has a Grade 3 education and was a herdboy until he got into politics, so his appreciation for education is certainly not as high as someone who went to Harvard Law School.